Mountaineer takes a peak at grandeur
Ft. Collins man fulfills dream of summiting Everest
Jim Davidson choked up attempting to quote himself. The 77-degree temperature radiating from the sun on the patio of a Denver coffee shop was a welcome change. Two weeks ago, he stood 4.5 miles closer to that sun as he watched it rise from the top of the world.
“A ... a ...,” he fumbled. “Hold on a second.” He paused and looked to his right. The man reflected in the window looked familiar — yet strange, compared with the one who left Colorado for Nepal 77 days earlier. When he flew halfway around the world in March, Davidson weighed 173 pounds. He is pushing 20 pounds lighter than that now, and looking every bit of it.
He turned back across the table, eyes suddenly stressed red, and tried again. “A lifetime.”
A few steps short of 29,029 feet in elevation May 21, Davidson, a mountaineer from Fort Collins, heard himself unwittingly mouth those two words behind his supplemental oxygen mask as he closed in on standing atop Mount Everest, the highest peak on Earth.
For 36 years, he had prepared for that moment. It may as well have been a lifetime for the 54-year-old who first dreamed of it while sitting in his freshman geology class at Umass Amherst. And the two years since his last attempt felt like another lifetime.
Davidson was on the mountain — one tier up from Everest base camp — in April 2015 when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal and killed nearly 9,000 people, including more than 20 at and around base camp, buried under an avalanche. He thought then he would become another casualty, zipped in his tent at Camp 1 as snow off the mountaintops started to pile around him. He and his climbing team were eventually rescued and helicoptered down to base to help clear the devastating mess that nature created.
He knew he would be back. He trained too hard and waited too long to be deterred by a natural disaster. And after studying the adjusted routes that climbers took in 2016 and doing his own work in the high country of Rocky Mountain National Park and Ouray Ice Park last winter, he knew it was time.
He spent 66 days overseas. Five were spent on the push to the summit, providing a rare opportunity to see Everest’s true peak. From base camp, it’s difficult to see the top. Even on the climbs before the push, if Everest isn’t cooperating, climbing’s holy grail resides somewhere beyond the gray. But when that window of weather opens to allow for a summit push, there’s no rush quite like it.
“It was what I expected from prior expeditions, but the grind was longer than I thought,” Davidson said. “The reward, however, was more grand than I ever could have imagined.
“It’s hard work, and a lot of it is just sitting around waiting for the weather to clear, but when it finally did for that final five-day summit push, it was even better than everything I ever hoped and dreamed for.”
Davidson didn’t take photos when he reached the summit; at minus-15 degrees Fahrenheit, the battery in his Gopro died. He didn’t call his wife — his satellite phone was dead, too. All he could do was stand there and watch the sun rise at 4:36 a.m. across Tibet, China and finally Nepal, from his throne at the top of the world.
As Davidson looked back to the west, the sun splashing golden-orange waves against the white-painted cliffs, he knew this moment was worth waiting a lifetime for.